IV
A week later, Mailing paid a visit to Professor Stepton. He had heard nothing of the Hardings and Chichester since the day of the luncheon in Onslow Gardens, but they had seldom been absent from his thoughts, and more than once he had looked at the words, "Dine with H.C." in his book of engagements, and had found himself wishing that "Hornton Street, Wednesday" was not so far distant.
The professor lived in Westminster, in a house with Adam ceilings, not far from the Houses of Parliament. He was unmarried, and Malling found him alone after dinner, writing busily in his crowded library. He had but recently returned from Paris, whither he had traveled to take part in a series of "sittings" with the famous medium, Mrs. Groeber.
In person the professor was odd, without being specially striking. He was of medium height, thin and sallow, with gray whiskers, thick gray hair, bushy eyebrows, and small, pointed and inquiring features which gave him rather the aspect of a prying bird. His eyes were little and sparkling. His mouth, strangely enough, was ecclesiastical. He nearly always wore very light-colored clothes. Even in winter he was often to be seen clad in yellow-gray tweeds, a yellow silk necktie, and a fawn-colored Homburg hat. And no human being had ever encountered him in a pair of boots unprotected by spats. One peculiarity of his was that he did not possess a walking-stick, another that he had never—so at least he declared—owned a pocket-handkerchief, having had no occasion to use one at any moment of his long and varied life. When it rained he sometimes carried an umbrella, generally shut. At other times he moved briskly along with his arms swinging at his sides.
As Malling came in he looked up and nodded.
"Putting down all about Mrs. Groeber," he observed.
"Anything new or interesting?" asked Malling.
"Just the usual manifestations, done in full light, though."
He laid aside his pen, while Malling sat down.
"A letter from Flammarion this morning," he said. "But all about Halley's comet, of course. What is it?"
Now the professor's "What is it?" was not general, but particular, and was at once understood to be so by Malling. It did not mean "Why have you come?" but "Why are you obsessed at this moment, and by what?"
"Let's have the mystery," he added, leaning his elbows on his just dried manuscript, and resting his sharp little chin on his doubled fists.
Yet Malling had hinted at no mystery, and had come without saying he was coming.
"You know a clergyman called Marcus Harding?" said Malling.
"Of St. Joseph's. To be sure, I do."
"Do you know also his senior curate, Henry Chichester?"
"No."
"Have you heard of him?"
"Oh dear, yes. And I fancy I've seen him at a distance."
"You heard of him from Harding, I suppose."
"Exactly, and Harding's wife."
"Oh, from Lady Sophia!"
"Who hates him."
"Since when?" said Malling, emphatically.
"I couldn't say. But I was only aware of the fact about a month ago."
"Have you any reason to suppose that Harding has been making any experiments?"
"In church music, biblical criticism, or what?"
"Say in psychical research?"
"No."
"Or that Chichester has?"
"No."
"Hasn't Harding ever talked to you on the subject?"
"He has tried to," said the professor, rather grimly.
"And you didn't encourage him?"
"When do I encourage clergymen to talk about psychical research?"
Malling could not help smiling.
"I have some reason—at least I believe so—to suppose that Harding and his curate Chichester have been making some experiments in directions not entirely unknown to us," he observed. "And what is more"—he paused—"what is more," he continued, "I am inclined to think that those experiments may have been crowned with a success they little understand."
Down went the professor's fists, his head was poked forward in Malling's direction, and his small eyes glittered almost like those of a glutton who sees a feast spread before him.
"The experiments of two clergymen in psychical research crowned with success!" he barked out.
"If so, I shall see what I can do in the pulpit—the Abbey pulpit!"
He got up, and walking slightly sidewise, with his hands hanging, and his fingers opening and shutting, went over to a chair close to Malling's.
"Get on!" he said.
"I'm going to. I want your advice."
When Malling had finished what he had to say, the professor, who had interrupted him two or three times to ask pertinent questions, put his hands on his knees and thrust his head forward.
"You said you wanted advice," he said. "What about?"
"I wish you to advise me how I had better proceed."
"You really think the matter important?" asked the professor.
Malling looked slightly disconcerted.
"You don't?" he said.
"You are deducing a great deal from not very much. That's certain," observed the professor.
"You never knew Chichester," retorted Malling. "I did—two years ago."
"Suppose you are right, suppose these two reverend gentlemen have done something such as you suppose—and that there has been a result, a curious result, what have we to do with it? Tell me that."
"You mean that I have no right to endeavor to make a secret investigation into the matter. But I'm positive both the men want help from me. I don't say either of them will ask it. But I'm certain both of them want it."
"Two clergymen!" said the professor. "Two clergymen! That's the best of it—if there is an it, which there may not be."
"Harding spoke very warmly of you."
"Good-believing man! Now, I do wonder what he's been up to. I do wonder. Perhaps he'd have told me but for my confounded habit of sarcasm, my way of repelling the amateur—repelling!" His arms flew out. "There's so much silliness beyond all bearing, credulity beyond all the patience of science. Table-turning women, feminine men! 'The spirits guide me, Professor, in every smallest action of my life!'—Wuff!—the charlatan battens and breeds. And the bile rises in one till Carlyle on his worst day might have hailed one as a brother bilious, and so denunciatory—Jeremiah nervously dyspeptic! And when you opened your envelop and drew out a couple of clergymen, really, really! But perhaps I was in a hurry! Clergymen in a serious fix, too, because of unexpected and not understood success! And I talk of repelling the amateur!"
Suddenly he paused and, with his bushy eyebrows twitching, looked steadily at Malling.
"I leave it to you," he said. "Take your own line. But don't forget that, if there's anything in it, development will take place in the link. The link will be a center of combat. The link will be an interesting field for study."
"The link?" said Malling, interrogatively.
"Goodness gracious me! Her ladyship! Her ladyship!" cried out the professor. "What are you about, Malling?"
And he refused to say another word on the matter till Malling, after much more conversation on other topics, got up to go. Then, accompanying him to the front door, the professor said:
"You know I think it's probably all great nonsense."
"What?"
"Your two black-coated friends. You bustle along at such a pace. Remember, I have made more experiments than you have, and I have never come upon an exactly similar case. I don't know whether such a thing can be. No more do you—you've guessed. Now, guessing is not at all scientific. At the same time you've proved you can be patient. If there is anything in this it's profoundly interesting, of course."
"Then you advise me—?"
"If in doubt, study Lady Sophia. Good night."
As Malling went away into the darkness he heard the professor snapping out to himself, as he stood before his house bareheaded:
"Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings! Très bien! But—reverend gentlemen of St. Joseph's! I shall have to look for telergic power in my acquaintance Randall Cantuar, when I want it! By Jove!"
"If in doubt, study Lady Sophia." As Malling thought over these parting words, he realized their wisdom and wondered at his own short-sightedness.
He had sent his cards to Onslow Gardens after the luncheon with the Hardings. He wished now he had called and asked for Lady Sophia. But doubtless he would have an opportunity of being with her again. If she did not offer him one, he would make one for himself.
He longed to see her with Henry Chichester.
During the days that elapsed before "Hornton Street, Wednesday" he considered a certain matter with sedulous care. His interview with Stepton had not been fruitless. Stepton always made an effect on his mind. Casual and jerky though his manner was, obstinate as were his silences at certain moments, fragmentary as was his speech, he had a way of darting at the essential that set him apart from most men. Malling remembered a horrible thing he had once seen in the Sahara, a running gazelle killed by a falcon. The falcon, rising high in the blue air, had followed the gazelle, had circled, poised, then shot down and, with miraculous skill, struck into the gazelle's eye. Unerringly from above it had chosen out of the vast desert the home for its cruel beak. Somewhat in similar fashion, so Malling thought, Stepton rose above things, circled, poised, sank, and struck into the heart of the truth unerringly.
Perhaps he was able to do this because he was able to mount, falconwise!
Malling would have given a good deal to have Stepton with him in this affair, despite the professor's repellent attitude toward the amateur. Well, if there really was anything in it, if strangeness rose out of the orthodox bosom of St. Joseph's, if he—Malling—found himself walking in thick darkness, he meant to bring Stepton into the matter, whether at Stepton's desire or against it. Meanwhile he would see if there was enlightenment in Hornton Street.
On the Wednesday the spell of fine weather which had made London look strangely vivacious broke up, and in the evening rain fell with a gentle persistence. Blank grayness took the town. A breath as of deep autumn was in the air. And the strange sadness of cities, which is like no other sadness, held the spirit of Evelyn Malling as he walked under an umbrella in the direction of Kensington High Street. He walked, to shake off depression. But in his effort he did not succeed. All that he saw deepened his melancholy; the soldiers starting out vaguely from barracks, not knowing what to do, but free for a time, and hoping, a little heavily, for some adventure to break the military monotony of their lives; the shopgirls, also in hope of something to "take them out of themselves"—pathetic desire of escape from the little prison, where the soul sits, picking its oakum sometimes, in its cell of flesh!—young men making for the parks, workmen for the public houses, an old woman, in a cap, peering out of an upper window in Prince's Gate; Italians with an organ, and a monkey that looked as if it were dying of nostalgia; women hurrying—whither?—with anxious faces, and bodies whose very shapes, and whose every movement, suggested, rather proclaimed, worry.
Malling knew it was the rain, the possessive grayness, which troubled his body to-night, and through his body troubled his spirit. His nostrils inhaled the damp, and it seemed to go straight into his essence, into the mystery that was he. His eyes saw no more blue, and it was as if they drew a black shutter over all the blue in his heart, blotting it out. People became doomed phantoms, because the weather had changed and because London knows how to play Cassandra to the spirit of many a man. To Malling, as he presently turned to the right, Hornton Street looked like an alley leading straight to the pit of despair, and when he tapped on the blistered green door of the small house where the curate lived, it was as if he tapped seeking admittance to all the sorrowful things that had been brought into being to beset his life with blackness.
A neat servant-girl opened the door. There was a smell of roast mutton in the passage. So far well. Malling took off his hat and coat, hung them up on a hook indicated by the plump red hand of the maid, and then followed her upstairs. The curate was in possession of the first floor.
Malling knew that it would be a case of folding-doors and perhaps of curtains of imitation lace. It was a case of folding-doors. But there was a dull green hue on the walls that surely bespoke Henry Chichester's personal taste. There were bookcases, there were mezzotints, there were engravings of well-known pictures, and there were armchairs not covered with horsehair. There was also a cottage piano, severely nude. In the center of the room stood a small square table covered with a cloth and laid for two persons.
"I'll tell Mr. Chichester, sir."
The maid went out. From behind the folding-doors came to Malling's ears the sound of splashing water, then a voice saying, certainly to the maid, "Thank you, Ellen, I will come." And in three minutes Chichester was in the room, apologizing.
"I was kept late in the parish. There's a good deal to do."
"You're not overworked?" asked Malling.
"Do I look so?" said Chichester, quickly.
He turned round and gazed at himself in an oval Venetian mirror which was fixed to the wall just behind him. His manner for a moment was oddly absorbed as he examined his face.
"London life tells on one, I suppose," he said, again turning. "We change, of course, in appearance as we go on."
His blue eyes seemed to be seeking something in Malling's impenetrable face.
"Do you think," he said, "I am much altered since we used to meet two years ago? It would of course be natural enough if I were."
Malling looked at him for a minute steadily.
"In appearance, you mean?"
"Of course."
"To-night it seems to me that you have altered a good deal."
"To-night?" said the curate, as if with anxiety.
"If there is any change,—and I think there is,—it seems to me more apparent to-night than it was when I saw you the other day."
Ellen, the maid, entered the room bearing a tray on which was a soup-tureen.
"Oh, dinner!" said Chichester. "Let us sit down. You won't mind simple fare, I hope. We are having soup, mutton,—I am not sure what else."
"Stewed fruit, sir," interpolated Ellen.
"To be sure! Stewed fruit and custard. Open the claret, Ellen, please."
"Have you been in these rooms long?" asked Malling, as they unfolded their napkins.
"Two years. All the time I have been at St. Joseph's. The rector told me of them. The curate who preceded me had occupied them."
"What became of him?"
"He has a living in Northampton now. But when he left he had nothing in view."
"He was tired of work at St. Joseph's?"
"I don't think he got on with the rector."
The drip of the rain became audible outside, and a faint sound of footsteps on the pavement.
"Possibly I shall not stay much longer," he added.
"No doubt you'll take a living."
"I don't know. I don't know. But, in any case, I may not stay much longer—perhaps. That will do, Ellen; you may go and fetch the mutton. Put the claret on the table, please."
When the maid was gone, he added:
"One doesn't want a servant in the room listening to all one says. As she was standing behind me I had forgotten she was here. How it rains to-night! I hate the sound of rain."
"It is dismal," said Malling, thinking of his depression while he had walked to Hornton Street.
"Do you mind," said the curate, slightly lowering his voice, "if I speak rather—rather confidentially to you?"
"Not at all, if you wish to—"
"Well, now, you are a man of the world, you've seen many people. I wish you would tell me something."
"What is it?"
Ellen appeared with the mutton. As soon as she had put it on the table and departed, Chichester continued:
"How does Mr. Harding strike you? What impression does he make upon you?"
Eagerness, even more, something that was surely anxiety, shone in his eyes as he asked the question.
"He's a very agreeable man."
"Of course, of course! Would you say he was a man to have much power over others, his fellow-men?"
"Speaking quite confidentially—"
"Nothing you say shall ever go beyond us two."
"Then—I don't know that I should."
"He doesn't strike you as a man of power?"
"In the pulpit?"
"And out of it—especially out of it?"
"He may have been. But—perhaps he has lost in power. Dispersion, you know, does not make for strength."
Suddenly the curate became very pale.
"Dispersion—you say!" he almost stammered.
As if to cover some emotion, he looked at Malling's plate, and added:
"Have some more? You won't? Then—"
He got up and rang the bell. Ellen reappeared, cleared away, and put the stewed fruit and custard on the table.
"Bring the coffee in ten minutes, Ellen. I won't ring."
"Very well, sir."
"Dispersion," said Chichester to Malling in a firmer voice, as Ellen disappeared.
"Concentration makes for strength. Mr. Harding seems to me mentally—what shall I say?—rather torn in pieces, as if preyed upon by some anxiety. Now, if you'll allow me to be personal, I should say that you have greatly gained in strength and power since I knew you two years ago."
"You—you observe a difference?" asked Chichester, apparently in great perturbation.
"A striking difference."
"And—and would you say I looked a happier, as well as a—a stronger man?"
"I couldn't with truth say that."
"Very few of us are happy," said Chichester, with trembling lips. "Poor miserable sinners as we are! And we clergymen, who set up to direct others—" he broke off.
He seemed greatly, strangely, moved.
"You must forgive me. I have had a very hard day's work!" he murmured. "The coffee will do me good. Let us sit in the armchairs, and Ellen can clear away. I wish I had two sitting-rooms."
He rang to make Ellen hurry. Till she came Malling talked about Italian pictures and looked at the curate's books. When she had cleared away, left the coffee, and finally departed, he sat down with an air of satisfaction. Chichester did not smoke, but begged Malling to light up, and gave him a cigar.
"Coffee always does one good," he said. "It acts directly on the heart, and seems to strengthen the whole body. I have had a trying day."
"You look tired," said Malling.
The fact was that Chichester had never recovered the color he had so suddenly lost when they were discussing Mr. Harding.
"It's no wonder if I do," rejoined Chichester, in a voice that sounded hopeless.
He drank some coffee, seemed to make a strong effort to recover himself, and, with more energy, said:
"I asked you here because I wanted to renew a pleasant acquaintanceship, but also—you won't think me discourteous, I know—because—well, I had a purpose in begging you to come."
"Won't you tell me what it is?"
The curate shifted in his armchair, clasped and unclasped his hands. A mental struggle was evidently going on within him. Indeed, during the whole evening Malling had received from him a strong impression of combat, of confusion.
"I wanted to continue the discussion we began at Mr. Harding's the other day. You remember, I asked you not to tell him you were coming?"
"Yes."
"I think it's best to keep certain matters private. People so easily misunderstand one. And the rector has rather a jealous nature."
Malling looked at his companion without speaking. At this moment he was so strongly interested that he simply forgot to speak. Never, even at a successful sitting when, the possibility of trickery having been eliminated, a hitherto hidden truth seemed about to lift a torch in the darkness and to illumine an unknown world, had he been more absorbed by the matter in hand. Chichester did not seem to be struck by his silence, and continued:
"And then not every one is fitted to comprehend properly certain matters, to see things in their true light. Now the other day you said a thing that greatly impressed me, that I have never been able to get out of my mind since. You said, 'Harm can never come from truth.' I have been thinking about those words of yours, night and day, night and day. Tell me—did you mean them?"
The question came from Chichester's lips with such force that Malling was almost startled.
"Certainly I meant them," he answered.
"And if truth slays?"
"And is death the worst thing that can happen to a man, or to an idea—some wretched fallacy, perhaps, that has governed the minds of men, some gross superstition, some lie that darkens counsel?"
"You think if a man lives by a lie he is better dead?"
"Don't you think so?"
"But don't we all need a crutch to help us along on the path of life?"
"What! You, a clergyman, think that it is good to bolster up truth with lies?" said Malling, with genuine scorn.
"I didn't say that."
"You implied it, I think."
"Perhaps if you had worked among men and women as much as I have you would know how much they need. If you went abroad, say to Italy, and saw how the poor, ignorant people live happily oftentimes by their blind belief in the efficacy of the saints, would you wish to tear it from them?"
"I think we should live by the truth, and I would gladly strike away a lie from any human being who was using it as a crutch."
"I thought that once," said Chichester.
The words were ordinary enough, but there was something either in the way they were said, or in Chichester's face as he said them, that made Malling turn cold.
To cover his unusual emotion, which he was ashamed of, and which he greatly desired to hide from his companion, he blew out a puff of cigar smoke, lifted his cup, and drank the rest of his coffee.
"May I have another cup?" he said. "It's excellent."
The coffee-pot was on the table. Chichester poured out some more.
"I will have another cup, too," he said. "How it wakes up the mind."
He glanced at Mailing and added:
"Almost terribly sometimes."
"Yes. But—going back to our subject—don't you still think that men should live by the truth?"
"I think," began Chichester—"I think—"
It seemed as if something physical prevented him from continuing. He swallowed, as if forcing something down his throat.
"I think," he got out at last, "that few men know how terrible the face of truth can be."
His own countenance was contorted as he spoke, as if he were regarding something frightful.
"I think"—he turned right round in his chair to confront Malling squarely—"that you do not know."
For the first time he completely dominated Malling, Chichester the gentle, cherubic clergyman, whom Malling had thought of as good, but weak, and certainly as a negligible quantity. He dominated, because at that moment he made Malling feel as if he had some great possession of knowledge which Malling lacked.
"And you?" said Malling. "Do you know?"
The curate's lips worked, but he made no answer.
Malling was aware of a great struggle in his mind, as of a combat in which two forces were engaged. He got up, walked to the window, and stood as if listening to the rain.
"If only Stepton were here!" thought Malling.
There was a truth hidden from him, perhaps partly divined, obscurely half seen, but not thoroughly understood, as a whole invisible. Stepton would be the man to elucidate it, Malling thought. It lured him on, and baffled him.
"How it rains!" said the curate at last, without turning.
He bent down and opened the small window. The uneasy, almost sinister noise of rain in darkness entered the room, with the soft smell of moisture.
"Do you mind if we have a little air?" he added.
"I should like it," said Malling.
Chichester came back and sat down again opposite Malling. His expression had now quite changed. He looked calmer, gentler, weaker, and much more uninteresting. Crossing his legs, and folding his thin hands on his knees, he began to talk in his light tenor voice. And he kept the conversation going on church music, sacred art in Italy, and other eminently safe and respectable topics till it was time for Malling to go.
Only when he was letting his guest out into the night did he seem troubled once more. He clasped Malling's hand in his, as if almost unaware that he was doing so, and said with some hesitation:
"Are you—are you going to see the rector again?"
"Not that I know of," said Malling, speaking the strict truth, and virtually telling a lie at the same time.
For he was determined, if possible, to see Mr. Harding, and that before very long.
"If I may say so," Chichester said, shifting from one foot to another and looking down at the rain-sodden pavement, "I wouldn't see him."
"May I ask you why?"
"You may get a wrong impression. Two years ago he was another man. Strangers, of course, may not know it, not realize it. But we who have lived with him do know it. Mr. Harding is going down the hill."
There was a note of deep sadness in his voice. Had he been speaking of himself, of his own decadence, his tone could scarcely have been more melancholy.
And for long Malling remembered the look in his eyes as he drew back to shut his door.
In the rain Malling walked home as he had come. But now it was deep in the night and his depression had deepened. He was a self-reliant man, and not easily felt himself small, though he was not conceited. To-night he felt diminished. The worm-sensation overcame him. That such a man as Chichester should have been able to convey to him such a sensation was strange, yet it was from Chichester that this mental chastisement had come. For a moment Chichester had towered, and at that moment Malling surely had dwindled, shrunk together, like a sheet of paper exposed to the heat of a flame.
But that Chichester should have had such an effect on him—Malling!
If Mr. Harding was going down the hill, Chichester surely was not. He had changed drastically since Malling had known him two years ago. In power, in force, he had gained. He now conveyed the impression of a man capable, if he chose, of imposing himself on others. Formerly he had been the wax that receives the impress. But whereas formerly he had been a contented man, obviously at peace with himself and with the world, now he was haunted by some great anxiety, by some strange grief, or perhaps even by some fear.
"Few men know how terrible the face of the truth can be."
Chichester had said that.
Was he one of the few men?
And was that why now, as Malling walked home in the darkness and rain, he felt himself humbled, diminished?
For Malling loved knowledge and thought men should live by it. Had truth a Medusa face, still would he have desired to look into it once, would have been ready to endure a subsequent turning to stone.
That Chichester should perhaps have seen what he had not seen—that troubled him, even humbled him.
Some words of Professor Stepton came back to his mind: "If there's anything in it, development will take place in the link." And those last words: "If in doubt, study Lady Sophia."
Mailing was in doubt. Why not follow Stepton's advice? Why not study Lady
Sophia?
He resolved to do it. And with the resolve came to him a sense of greater well-being. The worm-sensation departed from him. He lifted his head and walked more briskly.
V
On the night following the dinner in Hornton Street, Malling went to the Covent Garden Opera House to hear "La Traviata." The well-worn work did not grasp the attention of a man who was genuinely fond of the music of Richard Strauss, with its almost miraculous intricacies, and who was willingly captive to Debussy. He looked about the house from his stall, and very soon caught sight of Lady Mansford, Lady Sophia's sister-in-law, in a box on the Grand Tier. Malling knew Lady Mansford. He resolved to pay her a visit, and as soon as the curtain was down, and Tetrazzini had tripped before it, smiling not unlike a good-natured child, he made his way upstairs, and asked the attendant to tap at a door on which was printed, "The Earl of Mansford." The man did so, and opened the door, showing a domestic scene highly creditable to the much maligned British aristocracy—Lord Mansford seated alone with his wife, in evidently amicable conversation.
After a few polite words he made Malling sit down beside her, and, saying he would have a cigarette in the foyer, he left them together.
Lady Mansford was a pretty, dark woman, of the slightly irresponsible and little-bird type. She willingly turned her charmingly dressed head and chirped when noticed, and she was generally noticed because of her beauty. Now she chirped of Ceylon, where Malling had been, and then, more vivaciously, of Parisian milliners, where she had been. From these allied subjects Malling led her on to a slightly different topic—religion.
"I went to St. Joseph's last Sunday week," he presently said.
"St. who—what?" said Lady Mansford, who was busy with her opera-glasses, and had just noticed that Lady Sindon, a bird-like rival of hers, had changed the color of her hair, fortunately to her—Lady Sindon's—disadvantage.
"To St. Joseph's, to hear your brother-in-law preach."
"It doesn't do at all," murmured Lady Mansford. "It makes her look
Chinese."
"You said—?"
"Mollie Sindon. But what were you talking about? Do tell me." She laid down her glasses.
"I was saying that I went to church last Sunday week."
"Why?"
"To hear your brother-in-law preach at St. Joseph's."
"Marcus!" exclaimed Lady Mansford.
She pursed her lips.
"I don't go to St. Joseph's. Poor Sophy! I'm sorry for her."
"I lunched with Lady Sophia after the service."
"Did you? Isn't it sad?"
"Sad! I don't quite understand?" said Malling, interrogatively.
"The change in him. Of course people say it's drink. Such nonsense! But they must say something, mustn't they?"
"Is Mr. Harding so very much changed?"
"Do you mean to say you didn't notice it?"
"I never met him till within the last fortnight."
"He's transformed—simply. He might have risen to anything, with his energy, his ambition, and his connections. And now! But the worst of it is no one can make out why it is. Even Sophia and Isinglass—my husband, you know!—haven't an idea. And it gets worse every day. Last Sunday I hear his sermon was too awful, a mere muddle of adjectives, such as one hears in Hyde Park, I believe. I never liked Marcus particularly. I always thought him too autocratic, too determined to dominate. He had that poor little Mr. Chichester—his curate—completely under his thumb. Mr. Chichester couldn't call his soul his own. He worshiped Marcus. But now they say even he is beginning to think that his god is of clay. What can it be? Do you think Marcus is losing his mind?"
"Oh, I should hope not," returned Malling, vaguely. "Has it been going on long?"
"Oh, for quite a time. But it all seemed to come on gradually—as things do, you know! Poor Sophy has always adored him, and given way to him in everything. In her eyes all that he does is right. She never says a word, I believe, but she must be suffering the tortures of—you know! There's Winnie Rufford coming in! How astonishingly young she looks. Were you at the Huntingham's ball? Well—"
Lady Mansford twittered no more about the Harding menage. But Malling felt that his visit had not been fruitless.
After the opera he went to a party in Grosvenor Street where again he managed to produce talk of the Hardings. It seemed that Lady Mansford had not exaggerated very much. Among those who knew the Hardings a change in the rector of St. Joseph's had evidently been generally noticed. Malling took in to supper a Mrs. Armitage, a great friend of Lady Sophia's, and she made no secret of the fact that Lady Sophia was greatly distressed.
"I thought she would have been here to-night," Mrs. Armitage said. "But she isn't. I suppose she felt she couldn't face it. So many of his congregation are here, or so many who were in his congregation."
"The church was crammed to the doors last Sunday week when he preached," observed Malling.
"Was it? Curiosity, I suppose. It certainly can't have been the intellectual merit of the sermon. I heard it was quite deplorable. But last Sunday's, I was told, was worse still. No continuity at all, and the church not full. People say the curate, Mr. Chichester, who often preaches in the evening, is making a great effect, completely cutting out his rector. And he used to be almost unbearably dull."
"Will you have a quail?"
"Please. You might give me two. My doctor says if I sit up late—thank you!"
"I've never heard Mr. Chichester preach," said Malling.
"He seems to have come on marvelously, to be quite another man."
"Quite another man, does he?"
"Yes. It's very trying for the Hardings naturally. If it continues I think there will have to be a change. I don't think things can go on as they are. My friend Sophia won't be able to stand it."
"You mean—the contrast?"
"Between her husband and Mr. Chichester. She's very highly strung and quite worships her husband; though, between you and me, I think rather in the slave spirit. But some women are like that. They can't admire a man unless he beats them. Not that Mr. Harding ever dreamed of doing such a thing to Sophia, of course. But his will had to be law in everything. You know the type of man! It's scarcely my idea of what a clergyman should be. I think a man who professes to direct the souls of others should be more gentle and unselfish, especially to his wife. Another quail? Well, really, I think perhaps I will. They are so absurdly small this season, aren't they? There's scarcely anything on them."
So that minute fraction of the world that knew of the existence of the Hardings began to utter itself concerning them, and Malling was fortified in his original belief which he had expressed to Professor Stepton.
Among his many experiments made in connection with psychical research those which had interested him the most had been those in which the mystery of the human will had seemed to be deeply involved. Malling was essentially a psychologist. And man was to him the great mystery, because man contained surely something that belonged to, that was lent to, man, as it were, by another, the mind beyond, the anima mundi. When Malling drew mentally, or spiritually, very near to any man, however rude, however humble, he always had the feeling that he was approaching holy ground. Hidden beneath his generally imperturbable exterior, sunk beneath the surface incredulity of his mind, there was the deep sense of mighty truths waiting the appointed day of proclamation. Surely, he often thought, if there is God in anything, in the last rays of the sunset, in the silence of night upon the sea, in the waking of spring among the forests and the gardens, in the song of the nightingale which knows not lovers are listening, there is God in the will of man.
And when he made investigations into the action of will upon will, or of will—as it seemed—upon matter, he was held, as he was not held by the appearance of so-called spirit faces and spirit forms, even when he could not connect these with trickery which he knew how to expose. Perhaps, however, his incredulity in regard to these latter phenomena was incurable, though he did not know it. For he knew nearly all the devices of the charlatans. And when the so-called spirits came, the medium was always entranced, that is, apparently will-less, and so to Malling not interesting.
Now, from what Harding and Chichester had said to him, and from what he had observed for himself, Malling believed that the two clergymen must have had sittings together, probably with the usual tremendous object of the ignorant amateur, that merely of communicating with the other world. Considering who the two men were, Malling believed that in all probability they had sat alone and in secret. He also felt little doubt that from Mr. Harding's brain had come the suggestion of these practices, that his will had led Chichester on to them. Although he had not known the rector two years ago, he had gathered sufficient testimony to the fact that he had been a man of powerful, even perhaps of tyrannical, temperament, formed rather to rule than to be ruled. He knew that Chichester, on the contrary, had been gentle, kindly, yielding, and of somewhat weak, though of very amiable, nature. The physique of the two men accorded with these former temperaments. Harding's commanding height, large frame, big, powerful face and head, rather hard gray eyes, even his large white teeth, his bony, determined hands, his firmly treading feet, suggested force, a dominating will, the capacity, and the intention, to rule. Henry Chichester's fleshly envelop, on the other hand, cherubic, fair, and delicate, his blue eyes, small bones, the shape of forehead and chin, the line of the lips, hinted at—surely more than that, surely stated mildly—the existence within it of a nature retiring, meek, and ready to be ruled by others. No wonder if Chichester had been, as Lady Mansford had said, completely under the rector's thumb, no wonder if he had been unable to "call his soul his own" and had "worshiped Marcus."
Yes, if there had been these secret sittings by these two men, it was Harding who had persuaded Chichester to take part in them. And what had these sittings led to, what had been their result?
The ignorant outsider, the hastily skeptical, of course would say that there could have been no result. Malling, knowing more, knew better. He had seen strange cases of temporary confusion of a man's will brought about by sittings, of what had seemed temporary change even of a man's nature. When a hitherto sane man goes mad he often becomes the opposite of what he was. Those whom he formerly loved he specially singles out for hatred. That which he delighted to do he shrinks from with horror. Once good-natured, he is now of an evil temper, once gentle, he is fiercely obstinate, once gay, he cowers and weeps. So Malling had known a man, while retaining his sanity, to be transformed by the apparently trivial fact of sitting at a table with a friend, and placing his hands upon it with the hands of another man. He himself had sat with an Oxford friend,—who in later sittings became entranced,—and at the very first experiment this man had said to him, "It's so strange, now that I am sitting with you like this I feel filled with hatred toward you." This hatred, which had come upon this man at every successive sitting, had always faded away when the sitting was over. But was it certain that the feelings generated in sittings never persisted after they were broken up? Was it certain that in every case the waters that had been mysteriously troubled settled into their former stillness?
Harding and Chichester, for instance! Had the strong man troubled the waters of the weaker man's soul, and were those waters still agitated? That was perhaps possible. But Malling thought it was possible also, and he had suggested this to Professor Stepton, that the weaker man had infused some of his weakness, his self-doubtings, his readiness to be affected by the opinion of others, into his dominating companion. Malling believed it possible that the wills of the two clergymen, in some mysterious and inexplicable way, had mingled during their sittings, and that they had never become completely disentangled. If this were so, the result was a different Harding from the former Harding, and a different Henry Chichester from the former Henry Chichester.
What puzzled Malling, however, was the fact, if fact it were, that the difference in each man was not diminishing, but increasing.
Could they be continuing the sittings, if there had ever been sittings? All was surmise. As the professor had said, he, Malling, was perhaps deducing a good deal from very little. And yet was he? His instinct told him he was not. Yet there might no doubt be some ordinary cause for the change in Mr. Harding. Some vice, such as love of drink, or morphia, something that disintegrates a man, might have laid its claw upon him. That was possible. What seemed to Malling much more unaccountable was the extraordinary change in the direction of strength in Chichester. And the relations between the two men, if indeed the curate had once worshiped his rector, were mysteriously transformed. For now, was it not almost as if something of Harding in Chichester watched, criticized, Chichester in Harding?
But now—to study Lady Sophia! For if there was really anything in Malling's curious supposition, the woman must certainly be strangely affected. He remembered the expression in her eyes when her husband was preaching, her manner when she spoke of the curate as one of her husband's swans.
And he longed to see her again. She had said that she hoped he would come again to St. Joseph's and to her house, but he knew well that any such desire in her had arisen from her wounded pride in her husband. She wished Malling to know what the rector could really do. When she thought that the rector had recovered his former powers, his hold upon the minds of men, then she would invite Malling to return to St. Joseph's, but not before.
And when would that moment come?
It might not come for weeks, for months. It might never come. Malling did not mean to await it. Nevertheless he did not want to do anything likely to surprise Lady Sophia, to lead her to think that he had any special object in view in furthering his acquaintance with her.
While he was casting about in his mind what course to take, chance favored him.
Four days later, when he was strolling round the rooms in Burlington House, he saw not far in front of him the tall and restless figure of a woman. She was alone. For some time Malling did not recognize her. She did not turn sufficiently for him to see her face, and her almost feverish movements, though they attracted and fixed his attention, did not strike him as familiar. His thought of her, as he slowly followed in the direction she was taking, was, "What a difficult woman that would be to live with!" For the hands were never still; the gait was uneasy; nervousness, almost a sort of pitiful irritation, seemed expressed by her every movement.
In the big room this woman paused before the picture of the year, which happened to be a very bad one, and Malling, coming up, at last recognized her as Lady Sophia Harding.
He took off his hat. She seemed startled, but greeted him pleasantly, and entered into a discussion of the demerits which fascinate the crowd.
"You prefer seeing pictures alone, perhaps?" said Malling, presently.
"Indeed I don't," she answered. "I was coming to-day with my husband. We drove up together. But at the last moment he thought he remembered something,—some appointment with Mr. Chichester,—and left me."
There were irony and bitterness in her voice.
"He said he'd come back and meet me in the tea-room presently," she added.
"Shall we go there and wait for him?" asked Malling.
"But I'm afraid I'm taking up your time."
"I have no engagements this afternoon. I shall enjoy a quiet talk with you."
"It's very good of you."
They descended, and sat down in a quiet corner. In the distance a few respectable persons were slowly eating bath-buns with an air of fashion, their duly marked catalogues laid beside them on marble.
Far-off waiters, standing with their knees bent, conversed in undertones. A sort of subterranean depression, peculiar to this fastness of Burlington House, brooded over the china and the provisions.
"It reminds me of the British Museum tearoom," said Lady Sophia. "Here is tea! What a mercy! Modern pictures sap one's little strength."
She looked haggard, and was obviously on the edge of her nerves.
"Marcus might have come in," she added. "But of course he wouldn't—or couldn't."
"Doesn't he care for pictures?"
She slightly shrugged her shoulders.
"He used to. But I don't know that he does now."
"I suppose he has a tremendous amount to do."
"He used to do much more at Liverpool. If a man wishes to come to the front he mustn't sit in an armchair with folded hands."
There was a sharp sound of criticism in her voice which astonished Malling. At the luncheon, only about a fortnight ago, she had shown herself plainly as the adoring wife, anxious for her husband's success, nervously hostile to any one who interfered with it, who stood between him and the homage of his world. Now Malling noted, or thought he noted, a change in her mental attitude. He was instantly on the alert.
"I'm sure that's the last thing Mr. Harding would do," he said.
She shot a glance at him out of her discontented dark eyes.
"Are you?" she said.
And sarcasm crept in the words. She gave to Malling at this moment the impression of a woman so strung up as to be not her natural self, so tormented by some feeling, perhaps long repressed, that her temperament was almost furiously seeking an outlet, knowing instinctively, perhaps, that only there lay its salvation.
"His record proves it," said Malling, with serenely smiling assurance.
Lady Sophia twisted her lips. The Academy tea was very strong. Perhaps it had been standing. She drank a little, pulled at her long gloves restlessly, and looked at Malling. He knew she was longing to confide in somebody. If only he could induce her to confide in him!
"Oh, my husband's been a very active man," she said. "Everybody knows that. But in this modern world of ours one must not walk, or even run along, one must keep on rushing along if one intends to reach the goal."
"And by that you mean—?"
"Mean! The topmost height of your profession, or business, of whatever career you are in."
"You are ambitious," he said.
"Not for myself," she answered quickly. "I have no ambition for myself."
"But perhaps the ambition to spur on another successfully? That seems to me the truest, the most legitimate ambition of the woman all men worship in their hearts."
Suddenly tears started into her eyes. She was sitting opposite Malling, the tea-table between them. Now she leaned forward across it. By nature she was very sensitive, but she was not a self-conscious, woman. She was not self-conscious now.
"It is much better to be selfish," she said earnestly. "That is where we women make such a fatal mistake. Instead of trusting to ourselves, of relying on ourselves, and of having a personal ambition, we seek always another in whom we may trust; we are unhappy till we rely on another; it is for another we cherish, we hug, ambition. And then, when all founders, we realize too late what I dare say every man knows."
"What is that?"
"That we women are fools—fools!"
"For being unselfish?"
"For thinking we have power when we are impotent."
She made a gesture that was surely one of despair.
"No one—at any rate, no woman—has power for another," she added, with
almost terrible conviction. "That is all a legend, made up to please us,
I suppose. We draw a sword against darkness and think we are fighting.
Isn't it too absurd?"
With the last words she changed her tone, trying to make it light, and she smiled.
"We take everything too seriously. That's the trouble!" she said. "And men pretend we take nothing seriously."
"Very often they don't understand."
"Oh, please say never!" she exclaimed. "They never understand."
Suddenly Malling resolved on a very bold stroke.
"But I'm a man," he said, as if that obvious fact shattered her contention.
"What has that got to do with it?" she said, in obvious surprise.
"Because I do not understand."
For a moment she was silent. He thought he read what was passing through her mind, as he knew he had read her character. She was one of those women who must be proud of their men, who love to be ruled, but only by a conqueror, who delight to sink themselves, but in power, not in impotence. And now she was confronted by the shipwreck not merely of her hopes, but also of her belief. She saw a hulk drifting at the mercy of the waves that, perhaps, would soon engulf it. But she was not only despairing, she was raging too. For she was a woman with nervous force in her, and it is force that rages in the moments of despair, seeking, perhaps unconsciously, some means of action and finding none.
"Why should there not be some hope?" asked Malling, quietly.
"To-morrow is Sunday. If you go to morning church at St. Joseph's, and then to evening church, you will see if there is any hope."
"To evening church?"
"Yes, yes."
She got up.
"You are going?"
"I must. Forgive me!"
She held out her hand.
"But—"
"No, don't come with me, please."
"If I go to St. Joseph's to-morrow, afterward may I see you again?"
"If you think it's worth while."
Her face twisted. Hastily she pulled down her veil, turned away and left him.
VI
Malling went the next day to morning and evening service at St. Joseph's. He was not invited to lunch in Onslow Gardens, and he did not see Lady Sophia. On the whole, he was glad of this. He had enough to keep in his mind that day. The matter in which he was interested seemed growing before his eyes, like a thing coming out of the earth, but now beginning to thrust itself up into regions where perhaps it would eventually be hidden in darkness, with the great company of mysteries whose unraveling is beyond the capacity of man.
He had now, he felt sure, a clear comprehension of Lady Sophia. Their short interview at Burlington House had been illuminating. She was a typical example of the Adam's-rib woman; that is, of the woman who, intensely, almost exaggeratedly feminine, can live in any fullness only through another, and that other a man. Through Mr. Harding Lady Sophia had hitherto lived, and had doubtless, in her view, triumphed. Obviously a woman not free from a nervous vanity, and a woman of hungry ambition, her vanity and ambition had been fed by his growing notoriety, his increasing success and influence. The rib had thrilled with the body to which it belonged.
But that time of happy emotion, of admiration, of keen looking forward, was the property of the past. Lawn sleeves, purple, perhaps,—for who is more hopeful than this type of woman in the golden moments of life?—perhaps even an archiepiscopal throne faded from before the eyes they had gladdened—the eyes of faith in a man.
And a different woman was beginning to appear—a woman who might be as critical as she had formerly been admiring, a woman capable of becoming embittered.
On the Sunday of Malling's visit to Onslow Gardens, Mr. Harding's failure in the pulpit had waked up in his wife eager sympathy and eager spite, the one directed toward the man who had failed, the other toward the man who, as Malling felt sure, had caused the failure.
In Burlington House that woman, whom men with every reason adore, had given place to another less favorable toward him who had been her hero.
It seemed to Malling as if in the future a strange thing might happen, almost as if it must happen: it seemed to him as if Chichester might convey his view of his rector to his rector's wife.
"Study the link," Stepton had said. "There will be development in the link."
Already the words had proved true. There had been a development in Lady
Sophia such as Malling had certainly not anticipated. Where would it end?
Again and again, as he listened to the morning and evening sermons,
Malling had asked himself that question; again and again he had recalled
his conversation at Burlington House with Lady Sophia.
In the morning at St. Joseph's Mr. Harding had preached to a church that was half filled; in the evening Henry Chichester had preached to a church that was full to the doors. And each of the clergymen in turn had listened to the other, but how differently!
Mr. Harding had ascended to the pulpit with failure staring him in the face, and whereas on the Sunday when Malling first heard him he had obviously fought against the malign influence which eventually had prevailed over him, this time he had not had the vigor to make a struggle. Certainly he had not broken down. It might be said of him, as it was once said of a nation, that he had "muddled through." He had preached a very poor sermon in a very poor way, nervously, indeed, almost timidly, and with the manner of a man who was cowed and hopeless. The powerful optimism for which he had once been distinguished had given way to an almost unhealthy pessimism, alien surely to the minds of all believers, of all who profess to look forward to that life of which, as Tolstoi long ago said, our present life is but a dream. Even when he was uttering truths he spoke them as if he had an uneasy suspicion that they were lies. At moments he seemed to be almost pleading with his hearers to tolerate him, to "bear with him." Indeed, several times during his disjointed remarks he made use of the latter expression, promising that his discourse should be a short one. Very carefully he included himself among those aware of sin, very humbly he declared the unworthiness of any man to set himself up as a teacher and leader of others.
Now, humility is all very well, but if carried to excess, it suggests something less than a man. Mr. Harding almost cringed before his congregation. Malling did not feel that his humility was a pretense. On the contrary, it struck him as abominably real, but so excessive as to be not natural in any thorough man in a normal condition of mind and of body. It was the sort of humility that creates in the unregenerate a desire to offer a good kicking as a corrective.
Very different was the effect created by Chichester's sermon in the evening. Malling, aware though he had become of the great strengthening of Chichester, was amazed when he heard him preach.
Often it is said of a very fine preacher that he preached as one inspired. Chichester preached as one who knew. Never before had Malling been so impressed with the feeling that he was listening to truth, absolute truth, as he was while he listened to Chichester. There was something, though, that was almost deadly about it. It pierced like a lancet. It seared like a red-hot iron. It humbled almost too much. Here was no exaggerated humility, no pleading to be borne with, no cringing, and no doubt. A man who knew was standing up, and, with a sort of indifference to outside opinion that was almost frightening, was saying some of the things he knew about men, women—and surely God!
The subject was somewhat akin to that of the first sermon of Mr. Harding which Malling had heard. The rector then had preached on self-knowledge. The curate, now, preached on hypocrisy. Incidentally he destroyed his rector's sermon, flung it away on the scrap-heap, and passed on. This was not done viciously, but it was done relentlessly. Indeed, that was the note of the whole sermon. It was relentless, as truth is relentless, as death is relentless. And besides being terribly true, it was imaginative. But the preacher almost succeeded in conveying the impression to his congregation that what is generally called imagination is really vision, that the true imagination is seeing what is, but is often hidden, knowing what is, but is often unknown. The latter part of the sermon struck Malling as very unusual, even as very daring.
The preacher had spoken of the many varieties of hypocrisy. Finally he drew a picture of a finished hypocrite. And the man lived as a man lives in the pages of a great writer. One could walk round him, one knew him. And then Chichester treated him as the writer treats his creation; he proceeded to show his hypocrite in action.
The man, happy, almost triumphant,—for he now often looked upon himself with the eyes of others who knew him not,—was walking to his home on a winter's evening along a country road, passing now and then rustics who respectfully saluted him, neighbors who grasped his hand, children who innocently smiled at him, women who whispered that he was a fine fellow, the clergyman of his parish, who gave him God-speed upon his way as to one who deserved that God should speed him because his way was right. Snow was upon the ground. Such light as there was began to fade. It was evident that the night, which was very still, was going to be very dark. And the man stepped out briskly. Presently, at a lonely part of the road, happening to look down, he saw footprints in the freshly fallen snow. They were of feet that had recently passed on the way he was following. They had attracted, they continued to attract, his attention, he knew not why. And as he went on, his eyes were often upon them.
Presently he began to wonder about the feet which had made the prints he saw. Did they belong to a man or a woman? The prints were too large to have been made by the feet of a child. He gazed at them searchingly, and made up his mind that it was a man who had recently trodden this road. And what sort of man was it that thus preceded him not very far away? He became deeply engrossed with this question. His mind revolved about this unknown traveler, floating forward in surmises, till, by chance, he happened to set his right foot in one of the prints left in the snow. His foot exactly filled it. This fact, he knew not why, startled him. He stopped, bent down, examined the snow closely, measured very carefully his feet with the prints before him, now rather faintly discerned in the gathering darkness. The prints might have been made by his own feet. Having ascertained this, and reflected for a moment, he went forward, now assailed by a growing curiosity as to the personality and character of the stranger. But perhaps he was not a stranger. He might surely well be a neighbor, an acquaintance, perhaps even a friend. The man meant, if possible, to come up with him, whoever he was, and he now hurried along with the intention of joining the unknown whose footprints were the same as his own.
At this point in his sermon Chichester paused for a moment. And Malling, who seldom felt any thrill at a séance, and who had often remained calmly watchful and alert during manifestations which amazed or terrified others, was aware of a feeling of cold, which seemed to pass like a breath through his spirit. The congregation about him, perhaps struck by the unusual form of the sermon, remained silent and motionless, waiting. In his stall sat the rector with downcast eyes. Malling could not at that moment discern his expression. His large figure and important powerful head and face showed almost like those of a carven effigy in the lowered light of the chancel. The choirboys did not stir, and the small, fair man in the pulpit, raising his thin hands, and resting them on the marble ledge, continued quietly, taking up his sermon with a repetition of the last words uttered, "whose footprints were the same as his own."
Again the cold breath went through Malling's spirit. He leaned slightly forward and gazed at Chichester.
For some time the man thus went onward, following the footprints in the snow, but not overtaking any one, and becoming momentarily more eager to satisfy his curiosity. Then, on a sudden, he started, stopped, and listened. It had now become very dark, and in this darkness, and the great stillness of night, he heard the faint sound of a footfall before him, brushing through the crisp snow, which lay lightly, and not very deep, on the hard highroad leading to the village on the farther outskirts of which his house was situated. He could not yet see any one, but he felt sure that the person who made this faint sound was no other than he in whose steps he had been treading. It would now be a matter of only a minute or two to come up with him. And the man went on, but more slowly, whether because he was now certain of attaining his object or for some other reason.
The sound of the footfall persisted, and was certainly not far off. The prints in the snow were so fresh that they seemed not quite motionless, as if the snow were only now settling after the pressure it had just suffered. The man slackened his pace. He did not like the sound which he heard. He began to feel as if he by whom it was made would not prove a companion to his taste. Yet his curiosity continued. There began within him a struggle between his curiosity and another sensation, which was of repugnance, almost of fear. And so equal were the combatants that the lights of the village were in sight, and he had not decreased the distance between himself and the other. Seeing the lights, however, his curiosity got the upper hand. He slightly quickened his pace, and almost immediately beheld the shape of a man relieved against the night, and treading onward through the snow. And as the sound of the footsteps had been disagreeable to his nerves, so the contours of the moving blackness repelled him. He did not like the look of this man whose footprints were the same as his own, and he decided not to join him. But, moving rather cautiously, he gained a little upon him, in order to make sure, if possible, whether or not he was a neighbor or an acquaintance.
The figure seemed somehow familiar to our man, indeed, oddly familiar. Nevertheless, he was unable to identify it. As he followed it, more and more certain did he become that he had seen it, that he knew it. And yet—did he know it? Had he seen it? It was almost as if one part of him denied while the other affirmed. He longed, yet feared, to see the face. But the face never looked back. And so, one at a little distance behind the other, they came into the village.